How do I get the current time in Python?

The time module

The time module provides functions that tells us the time in "seconds since the epoch" as well as other utilities.

import time

Unix Epoch Time

This is the format you should get timestamps in for saving in databases. It is a simple floating point number that can be converted to an integer. It is also good for arithmetic in seconds, as it represents the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00, and it is memory light relative to the other representations of time we'll be looking at next:

>>> time.time()
1424233311.771502

This timestamp does not account for leap-seconds, so it's not linear - leap seconds are ignored. So while it is not equivalent to the international UTC standard, it is close, and therefore quite good for most cases of record-keeping.

This is not ideal for human scheduling, however. If you have a future event you wish to take place at a certain point in time, you'll want to store that time with a string that can be parsed into a datetime object or a serialized datetime object (these will be described later).

time.ctime

You can also represent the current time in the way preferred by your operating system (which means it can change when you change your system preferences, so don't rely on this to be standard across all systems, as I've seen others expect). This is typically user friendly, but doesn't typically result in strings one can sort chronologically:

>>> time.ctime()
'Tue Feb 17 23:21:56 2015'

You can hydrate timestamps into human readable form with ctime as well:

>>> time.ctime(1424233311.771502)
'Tue Feb 17 23:21:51 2015'

This conversion is also not good for record-keeping (except in text that will only be parsed by humans - and with improved Optical Character Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, I think the number of these cases will diminish).

datetime module

The datetime module is also quite useful here:

>>> import datetime

datetime.datetime.now

The datetime.now is a class method that returns the current time. It uses the time.localtime without the timezone info (if not given, otherwise see timezone aware below). It has a representation (which would allow you to recreate an equivalent object) echoed on the shell, but when printed (or coerced to a str), it is in human readable (and nearly ISO) format, and the lexicographic sort is equivalent to the chronological sort:

UTC is a time standard that is nearly equivalent to the GMT timezone. (While GMT and UTC do not change for Daylight Savings Time, their users may switch to other timezones, like British Summer Time, during the Summer.)

datetime timezone aware

However, none of the datetime objects we've created so far can be easily converted to various timezones. We can solve that problem with the pytz module:

Equivalently, in Python 3 we have the timezone class with a utc timezone instance attached, which also makes the object timezone aware (but to convert to another timezone without the handy pytz module is left as an exercise to the reader):

You can also make a naive datetime object aware with the pytz timezone localize method, or by replacing the tzinfo attribute (with replace, this is done blindly), but these are more last resorts than best practices:

The pytz module allows us to make our datetime objects timezone aware and convert the times to the hundreds of timezones available in the pytz module.

One could ostensibly serialize this object for UTC time and store that in a database, but it would require far more memory and be more prone to error than simply storing the Unix Epoch time, which I demonstrated first.

The other ways of viewing times are much more error prone, especially when dealing with data that may come from different time zones. You want there to be no confusion as to which timezone a string or serialized datetime object was intended for.

If you're displaying the time with Python for the user, ctime works nicely, not in a table (it doesn't typically sort well), but perhaps in a clock. However, I personally recommend, when dealing with time in Python, either using Unix time, or a timezone aware UTC datetime object.

@C8H10N4O2 While you are correct that the other answers assume that your computer already knows the correct time, this answer assumes that the computer has a connection to the internet, that you are in the U.S., and that they will never take down that file/alter the link. Far more assumptions in this answer than accepted. Still clever none the less
– sudobangbangOct 28 '16 at 15:01

strftime(time_format) returns the current local time as a string that corresponds to the given time_format. Note: time.strftime() and datetime.strftime() support different directive sets e.g., %z is not supported by time.strftime() on Python 2.
– jfsJan 9 '15 at 23:36

1

Is it better practice to use datetime instead of time?
– Kristen G.Jan 15 '15 at 20:09

2

Many time module functions are thin wrappers around corresponding C functions. datetime is a higher level and it is usually more portable.
– jfsJan 15 '15 at 20:19

datetime.now() returns the current time as a naive datetime object that represents time in the local timezone. That value may be ambiguous e.g., during DST transitions ("fall back"). To avoid ambiguity either UTC timezone should be used:

import time, datetime
print(datetime.datetime.now().time()) # 11:20:08.272239
# Or in a more complicated way
print(datetime.datetime.now().time().isoformat()) # 11:20:08.272239
print(datetime.datetime.now().time().strftime('%H:%M:%S.%f')) # 11:20:08.272239
# But do not use this:
print(time.strftime("%H:%M:%S.%f", time.localtime()), str) # 11:20:08.%f

By default, now() function returns output in the YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS:MS format. Use the below sample script to get the current date and time in a Python script and print results on the screen. Create file getDateTime1.py with the below content.

When you call ctime() it will convert seconds to string in format 'Day Month Date HH:MM:SS Year' (for example: 'Wed January 17 16:53:22 2018'), then you call split() method that will make a list from your string['Wed','Jan','17','16:56:45','2018'] (default delimeter is space).

Brackets are used to 'select' wanted argument in list.

One should call just one code line. One should not call them like I did, that was just an example, because in some cases you will get different values, rare but not impossible cases.

You might also want to explain why extracting parts from multiple calls of ctime() like that (using "current" time at each call) will not necessarily give a useful value in combination with each other.
– Toby SpeightJan 16 at 16:09

I agree, of course that one should never call those functions in a manner like I did, I wrote it like that so one can copy single line with import, not to use all of them, my bad
– Bojan PetrovicJan 17 at 16:10

This question doesn't need a new answer just for the sake of it ... a shiny new-ish toy/module, however, is enough justification. That being the Pendulum library, which appears to do the sort of things which arrow attempted, except without the inherent flaws and bugs which beset arrow.

There's a lot of standards which need addressing, including multiple RFCs and ISOs, to worry about. Ever get them mixed up; not to worry, take a little look into dir(pendulum.constants) There's a bit more than RFC and ISO formats there, though.

When we say local, though what do we mean? Well I mean:

>>> print(pendulum.now().timezone_name)
Australia/Melbourne
>>>

Presumably most of the rest of you mean somewhere else.

And on it goes. Long story short: Pendulum attempts to do for date and time what requests did for HTTP. It's worth consideration, particularly for both its ease of use and extensive documentation.

Thank you for your interest in this question.
Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).